


It's Gonna Kill Me For the Rest of My Life. (Let Me Apologize While I'm Still Alive.)

by space_caramel_kaspbrak



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Angst with a kind of happy ending, F/F, There's a little fluff, the other Pogues are in here but just for a second
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24903325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_caramel_kaspbrak/pseuds/space_caramel_kaspbrak
Summary: Kiara remembers a lot of things. She remembers being a little girl and tugging on her mother's bracelets when she wanted her attention. She remembers having a purple and blue beta fish when she was 7 and crying until her head pounded when it died. She remembers befriending Pope, and then John B, and then JJ.She remembers Sarah Cameron.
Relationships: Sarah Cameron/Kiara
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	It's Gonna Kill Me For the Rest of My Life. (Let Me Apologize While I'm Still Alive.)

**Author's Note:**

> an angsty siarah fic. who would've thought.
> 
> i am convinced that sarah and kie kissed during kie's kook year. who's going to tell me otherwise? nobody? didn't think so. suck it, obx writers.
> 
> the title of this is from a song called The Rest of My Life by Less Than Jake. it's such a siarah song, and no i don't take criticism on that. Less Than Jake is actually really cool in general and if you haven't listened to them, what're you waiting for?
> 
> if you enjoyed please let me know! i love getting feedback, it's like crack to me. my tumblr is [here](https://pope-mayward.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to check that bad boy out. thank you for reading, babes!

Kiara remembers being 14 and feeling lost at the Kook Academy. 

She remembers how much she missed John B, and JJ, and Pope. It isn't like she could have just fallen back into their lives though; no, not with the way she had left them- after a tense argument when she was forced to explain why she was abandoning them. (She can also remember the look on JJ's face when she had finally managed to spit the words out. It makes her wonder if that's the look he had when his mother told him that she'd be leaving and never coming back.)

She left them for some rich kid private school. One that she didn't even like. And she had ignored them as if she had never known them in the first place.

No one liked her at the Kook Academy. She didn't fit in there because everyone knew she hung around the poor kids, the future-rejects. And she didn't fit in with the Pogues because she had deserted them (a small little something had always set her apart from them anyway; perhaps it was her wealth, perhaps it was because she was the only girl).

"Oh, look. It's the wannabe underprivileged girl," she'd hear in the halls at school from people with ironed polo shirts and gelled hair and vacant faces and hissing voices.

She'd hear nothing from the Pogues, and she didn't know which was worse: hateful words spat from people she despised, or no words from people she loved with her whole heart.

  
  


Kiara remembers being 15 and feeling so alone that she was starting to think that she was at the end of her very long, very thick, very _strong_ rope (because she has never been much of a quitter). She had asked herself how Hell could be any worse than this.

Then she remembers how Sarah Cameron's face appeared to her like an angel from Heaven when the only thing surrounding her was darkness and helplessness. It was like seeing the light at the end of a long tunnel, or acing a test she thought she had failed- except better somehow, more of an elevated feeling like she was finally able to breath fresh air again after breathing from polluted skies for so long.

"Hey... Kiara?" Sarah had asked hesitantly, standing at the stall in the girls' bathroom where Kiara had been hiding in. Kiara is certain that Sarah was kind of guessing at the name, judging by her tone.

"Hey, Sarah," Kiara had replied stupidly, amazingly. She stared at Sarah as the latter timidly pushed open the stall door and stood awkwardly.

Sarah had given her a smile. "Do you wanna save baby sea turtles with me after school?"

And the rest was history, as they say.

Kiara had agreed. What did she have to lose at that point?

  
  


She remembers the best day of her life.

She remembers the way Sarah had looked that afternoon, hair pulled back messily, her feet digging into the warm sand, lean arms meaningful and quick when swatting away the sea gulls. Like a dream come true; like an honest angel, even though Kiara was beginning to question the legitimacy of religion.

Standing tall, hands gripping long palm leaves and pointing them up to the sky, Sarah had looked over at her with eyes squinted against the bright sun. "Don't just stand there! Help me out here," she had called playfully as Kiara had just been watching her for a solid moment.

Sarah had laughed, so Kiara did too.

For just a second, she had thought she was coming down with some type of sickness because her stomach was twisted in knots that didn't feel very natural. She was worried that she was going to have to sit on the rickety bench beside the sidewalk while Sarah Cameron did all the hard work with the baby turtles. But she hadn't needed to sit down, and the tingling feeling in her belly had passed just as quickly as it had come.

_That_ had never happened when she watched the Pogues let the fish they caught back into the ocean or when she helped JJ fix John B's rooster's leg.

  
  


Kiara remembers being 15 and kissing Sarah Cameron.

After the baby sea turtle adventure, the two had been nearly inseparable. They spent every weekend with each other, researching endangered species and swapping clothes, and almost every week night too, studying or just sitting together until one of them had to go home.

So it was nothing out of the ordinary for Kiara to spend a few nights at Sarah Cameron's house at the eve of spring break.

Except it was quite something when, on the second night at 1 in the morning, Sarah had admitted that she'd never kissed anyone before.

Kiara remembers the shock she felt. _Sarah Cameron? Never kissed before in her life?_ Kiara supposed that it was shitty of her to wonder how that was possible due to the infamous boyfriends Sarah had had- all pressuring, low-life assholes.

Kiara remembers her first and only kiss, one that was with a boy in her 6th grade science class. It was a whole bunch of nothing, compared to how everyone talked about kissing at school. _This is it?_ she had asked herself after it was done. Not only did it feel lackadaisical, it was down right repulsive.

Perhaps it was just because it was her first, or perhaps it was just this one boy that was tremendously horrible at it. Or, more horrifying, maybe Kiara was the one that was tremendously horrible at kissing.

"It sounds awful," Sarah had giggled when Kiara had explained the experience to her while laying in Sarah's bed shoulder to shoulder. They stared at the same spot above them: the heart shaped gathering of popcorn ceiling right over their heads.

Kiara had giggled too, because it _was_ awful. So awful that it was funny, years later.

"I could kiss you," Sarah had suggested after a long moment of silence. It was dark out and all the lights were off, so Kiara could not see her face to tell if she was joking. "Just for practice, I mean. So it isn't awkward. If it isn't uncomfortable for you. Is that okay?"

Of course it was okay. It was more than okay, for reasons Kiara didn't really know.

She remembers how Sarah's lips had felt against her own- soft, experimental, and tasting of the strawberry Carmex chapstick that she could always be seen with. There was something else too, some other thing that she could just barely taste on the tip of her tongue.

It had made her mouth feel fizzy and the pit of her stomach feel fluttery for hours afterwards until she was finally able to succumb to unconsciousness.

  
  


Kiara remembers being 16 and breaking up with Sarah Cameron, but not in the way that you think.

They had never talked about the kiss; they'd never even vaguely gestured to it, as if they both had forgotten it had happened, like it was just some thing they did because they were bored in the middle of the night, or some normal thing that everyone did. It kind of tore Kiara up inside because she was pretty sure that most people don't kiss their best friend, and she absolutely did _not_ forget about it.

In fact, it was all she thought about- Sarah's tentative hand at her shoulder, Sarah's eyelashes fluttering against her cheek when she turned to get a better angle, the way her throat felt tight and restricted when Sarah had pulled away.

And for some reason, Sarah had not invited Kiara to her sweet 16 party. The one that she and Kiara had been planning together for the past month and a half. Granted, Sarah had changed a few major points, like replacing the fruit punch with cocktails and the pink cake with pot brownies and the halfway decent peers from school with older douche-bags like Topper and his friends.

She remembers how she felt when she saw the live on Instagram- numb at her fingertips, a falling sensation in her belly like the floor had been swiped out from under her. She was so angry that she hardly recognized what she was doing before it was already done.

She remembers how she felt after she had called the police, cell phone still gripped tightly in her hand. She'd felt queasy and sick to her stomach, but not at all how she felt the day at the beach when they had saved those baby turtles. Instead she felt nauseous, and light-headed with betrayal and disbelief. How could she have done this? How could _Sarah_ have done this?

But the deed had already been done. No looking back now.

Sarah had told everyone that she was a snitching little rat. She had ignored her, abandoned her after that. Just as Kiara had abandoned John B, and JJ, and Pope. A taste of her own medicine, as her mother would say.

It tastes bitter, Kiara had thought. It makes me sick.

  
  


Kiara remembers being 16 and making amends with Sarah Cameron on a lonely boat in the middle of the marsh.

It was difficult- actually dropping her fortress of anger long enough to listen to Sarah's side of the story.

"Why'd you do it? You were my best friend and you ghosted me, and I don't even really know why... I mean, really, what did I do?"

"You liked me..." Sarah had admitted quietly, and Kiara's heart stopped. She was so sure that she was going to bring up the kiss, that she knew Kiara was... different. "When people get close to me, I feel trapped and I bail. And then I blame them for it."

There was a moment where Sarah had just stared at her, the way she used to always do back when they had still been friends. Her hair was all around her neck from the wind and Kiara wanted nothing more than to reach over and move it for her.

But she didn't.

"I'm really sorry," Sarah whispered, and after a pause, she said, "And I miss you." She had given a small, sad half-smile and Kiara swore that there were tears in her eyes.

It had been a little less difficult to forgive her and move on after that, because at the end of the day, Kiara has a soft spot for Sarah Cameron, has always had a soft spot for her. She'd do anything to have the friendship they shared a year ago once again.

Why hadn't Sarah said something about the kiss, anyway? Was it something that didn't matter to her? Or had she forgotten completely?

Kiara doesn't know which possibility is worse.

  
  


Kiara remembers standing in the dark with Pope on Sarah Cameron's front lawn.

"I love you," he had told her, babbling on like an idiot.

"I want something _different_ ," she had said in a hurry, trying desperately to get her point across without stepping on any land mines that could blow her to pieces.

She did want something different, and that's why it was so terrible that he was confessing that there, right on the sacred ground that was never supposed to be touched by him.

Kiara had felt bad for rejecting him so harshly, for making him cry. Pope is kind and sweet, and above all else, he is her friend, but nothing more. Never could be anything more than the wonder of a friend that he already is.

  
  


Kiara remembers kissing Pope on the dock while JJ stood back and watched; she could feel his gaze burning a hole in her back of her head.

She likes to think that she doesn't really know why she had kissed him, but she does.

_If I can't have Sarah Cameron, then maybe I can have Pope._

Even though that isn't what she wanted at all.

  
  


Kiara remembers seeing JJ after the kiss, remembers the way his stare was somehow hostile and disappointed at the same time.

She had made a mental note to talk to him about it, even though she was pretty certain she already knew the cause of it, but she never did get around to asking him.

  
  


Kiara remembers hearing the news about John B and Sarah in that big, crowded tent.

They were to be presumed dead after being forced toward the storm by the very people that claimed they were trying to help them. Bullshit.

She remembers crying, falling into her mother's and father's arms and sobbing. She had felt so lost, so helpless. Like nothing in the world mattered anymore. She remembers hugging Pope too, collapsing in on each other and wondering what they were going to do now.

How could it be that she would never see Sarah Cameron again? After they had just made up? After they had just become friends again?

She wonders what bad thing she had done for karma to treat her so poorly.

  
  


Kiara remembers being 17 and getting a call from an unknown number after months of no signs from John B or Sarah.

She never answered calls from numbers she didn't know, but she had started to after John B and Sarah had gone down, just in case it was them.

"Hello?" she had asked, filled to the brim with curiosity and confusion.

"Hey, Kiara," Sarah's voice had replied, all confident and smug, and just as breathtaking as Kiara remembered.

Kiara had grinned, eyes prickling with tears. Her stomach was twisting in knots again, the kind she had gotten at the beach with the sea turtles. She sat up from her school work, stared at a spot on the wall to concentrate. She was quiet for a long moment, just listening to Sarah's breath on the other end of the line trying to decide if she was really there or not.

She knew exactly what Sarah was calling about without her even having to say it. Both her and John B were fine, and the gold was in sight, just waiting at the horizon for them. Kiara smiled, closed her eyes.

In a soft, loving voice, like home was returning to her, she had replied: "Hey, Sarah."


End file.
